College of Pontiffs

The real "Pontifices" are sixteen wise scholars, both men and women, patricians and plebians, expert in all things sacred and arcane, both written and orally transmitted. They ahve the great responsibility of being guarantors of the Pax Deorum. They are theologians and sages more than they are priests, and their task is not toe actively perform rituals or sacrifices, but to understand events, interpret signs, give responses, and provide rules, suggestions, or admonitions. For example, they're the ones who choose whether a certain foreigh deity can be incorporated inside the Roman religion and how, if a certain ritual is compliant with tradition, if the terrain on which we want to build a temple is free from other gods' influences, whether an out-of-the-ordinary event is a prodigium, and if it must be exorcised or just smoothed with a sacrifice, et cetera. They also take care of regulating everyday life, as they are the ones who every month decide which days are fas, nefas, endotercisi, or magical, which even the simplest citizens must take into account when organizing their daily activities. The Pontiffs have, for the longest time, gathered all of their studies in the Libri Pontificum. It's a very wide collection, divided into various series that contain news, details, and insights on virtually all topics related to teh sacred or arcane incidents of the entire history of the Empire. They're continuously updated and they make up an irreplaceable source for the understanding and the assimilation of the arcane arts of all of the people the Empire has come into contact with. They are also a precious resource for the magic history of the Empire, because a series of these books is for all effects an arcane timeline of Rome.
The College of Pontiffs assembles a total of 49 priests: the sixteen pontiffs as such, the Rex Sacrorum, the fifteen flamines, the six vestals, and the Pontifex Maximus, who oversees it. This last role is traditionally covered by the Emperor.